Twisty, Playful Mat

Thanks for joining me today. Be ready for some exploration in this class. This class is meant to be a combination of some Pilates moves, but also some more organic movement. Typically, pretty much every morning in my studio. I wear a long sleeve shirt and long pants. I lie on the floor.

I roll around. I use the friction of the floor to use my body in different ways. I'd like to share a little bit of that with you today. However, if you're not comfortable with that, you can stay on your mat and I'll offer a modification. But if you are comfortable with that, I encourage you to try, I don't know, slipping around on the floor a little bit and kinda see what happens. So let's get started.

Today, I would like to begin in a modified child's pose type position. So with your bottom on your feet and your head in the direction of the mat. So I say modified because will you put your arms so that your hands are kind of outside of your shoulders and see if you can make a forehead connection to the mat. Should you need to modify here? Put something underneath your bottom to help with your knees, or even put something underneath your head to help feel grounded. But all of us together, let's breathe and meditate into where we plan to go.

I find that myself and a lot of my clients actually have a very hard time finding that lateral posterior breathing. So when you practice drawing your abdominal muscles active in this shape, push down slightly with your hands to push your pelvis back toward your feet. So your actively using your abdominals to support this position as you breathe into your back body and side body and you exhale. Please continue to breathe as I guide you. Breathing deeply in through the nose, five counts or so, and exhaling completely out through the nose or mouth, if you prefer.

Five counts or so. As you do this, check-in with your own abdominals. And check-in that they are staying connected to your body versus relaxing onto your legs. So this is a very active position where you can practice your breath. Using your hands to push a little bit, shoulders softly away from ears, head is grounded, breathing in, and breathing out.

I oftentimes like to actually push my head into the mat and draw my low ribs up a little bit more. And so I can feel that real powerful connection. So I'm very passionate about making all the big shapes every day. This is our big rounded shape. Breathing in and breathing out.

Slowly bring yourself up to a quadruped position or your hands and knees. With your hands underneath your shoulders and your knees underneath your hips, align your body, Feel yourself levitating out of your hands and legs in your mind. And let's round the back. And as you round the back, push with your hands back toward your feet, hollowing your belly inward, pressing down through the top tops of your feet as well. And then come forward, open your heart, look forward, but still levitate up in your mind.

Breathe as it makes sense, please. Round your back, push with your hands toward your feet. Enjoy that movement and come forward and see if you might wanna go a little further forward stretching the wrists a little bit. Feel free to sway side to side. Feel free to explore. If you've taken classes from me before, you know I'm a big fan of the pleasure principle of exploring movement and allowing there to be a little wiggle room.

So I'm actually coming forward and back in a different way each time. So I'm shifting a little bit to one side. Breathing and moving, and then I'm gonna go to the other side as I go back. Good to let the head, the eyes, the neck be involved, and come forward. And then find center for me here.

Go ahead and cross your legs behind you, your ankles. Now if your knees allow, roll over your feet and come forward to a seat. If you need to do that a different way, please do. I've scooted forward on my mat so that I can roll down and warm up a little more. So sitting with your arms stretched out in front of you, your knees bent. Take a breath.

Round your spine and roll back nice and slowly. We're gonna go all the way down. So see if you can find control. And then when you're on your back, bring your feet closer to your bottom. Settle your body, take a couple breaths, letting your head relax, maybe roll side to side, feeling your rib cage grounded, feeling your pelvis relaxed.

I find in my teaching many of my clients come in and wanna move too quickly, taking a few moments and letting your body settle and breath, finding breath sets the foundation for then being able to move quickly and powerfully in hell. Use an exhale to ground your low spine and feel that first bit of flexion of your spine, lower down. So we're gonna do the pelvic curl, but can you really feel the abdominal focus first? And then lower back down. Continue on. So perhaps you use an exhale to do the movement into flexion and then the inhale to go back down. It's up to you.

This time, we'll go all the way up. So curl yourself all the way to your bridge. Check-in and try to press your pelvis higher keep your rib cage down, keep your arms active, inhale. Use an exhale to articulate one lovely vertebra at a time, inhale to prepare. Exhale curl up.

Feel the backs of the legs, the inner thighs, the arms, enjoy the movement here. So we are looking for a straight body, trying to get the pelvis high, and then articulate down. Let's do a couple more just a little faster curling up. Feeling the articulation, feeling the legs, feeling the inner thighs, and then down. Feeling your arms strong. Don't be shy. Feel free to use them a little bit.

Press down with the arms to help you feel your body. And down. And let's just go up one more time here. Nice little pelvic curl. Use the glutes. Use the hamstring.

Stay. Can you sway your pelvis to one side? Sway your pelvis to the other side. So I'm endeavoring to stay lifted. And I'm standing now on one leg, feeling my glute hamstring, and then standing on the other leg, trying to wake things up a little bit.

Let's do that a few more times. Of course, you're keeping your ribs tucked in, if you can. Trying to feel openness through your hips, and just explore the movement one more time to the other side. And then back to center and roll yourself down. Good. Bring your knees and feet together to touch.

Take your hands and hug the front of your body. So you could use your hands to hold, but I'd like you to think of squeezing your upper arms toward one another and then putting your hands wherever they land. Hopefully, you feel your rib cage very grounded. And your shoulders are gently away from your ears. So lift your heels up, keep your legs together, and just try a little baby spine sway here.

So the idea here is that you can keep that compression, that hug through the front of the body. As you just do a little baby spine sway. So I'm twisting my legs to one side and then I'm pulling back. And the breath is when you wanna breathe here. So find that you're focusing more on just keeping the rib cage grounded and breathing here one more time.

Change with charm is on top. And if you'd like to work a little harder, you're gonna go ahead and float the legs to tabletop and go again. Twist and twist. So what I'd like you to think about is really reaching through the opposite the arm, reaching the arm in the opposite direction of the legs. So you're creating opposition.

So I've let go of the hold of my hand so you can see me actually reaching, twisting, changing, twisting. One more time each side. Good. Hub your knees into your chest. Beautiful. And then put your legs down. So stretch your legs out to straight. If you take yoga, this is like a shavasana position, so your legs are relaxed and see how heavy you can make your legs and your pelvis.

Yeah. And then feel your rib cage grounded as well. Let your arms just kind of float up to the ceiling and try to feel that you're breathing into your back body, pelvis, legs, rib cage stays grounded. Yeah. Make a little clasp with your hands, so I'm making, like, a rounded shape, basically. And keeping my head down, I'm gonna bring my arms over to one side. And then over to the other side.

So when I go to the one side, I'm putting my elbow down and the whole back of my arm, my elbow down and the whole back of the arm. Now change the intention and reach with the other arm instead. So think of reaching grounding and reaching. So I have an elbow down, and I'm reaching across. And we're gonna continue doing that movement, trying to keep your legs relaxed, your pelvis relaxed, and find breath. So you're thinking about those low ribs rolling side to side, feeling that connection.

Now if you wanna work just a little harder, try hovering your head just a little bit as you do this and reach and reach. So I'm not doing an abdominal curl. I'm just moving. Moving and moving. Go ahead and rest. So option one, you keep your head down the whole time. Option two, we're gonna hover.

We're adding on. Same legs, same pelvis. Arms are just gonna reach forward in front of you a little bit. Right? So we're gonna do a little circle around and we look and lift. We circle back and we look and lift. So I'm doing that rotation looking and lifting with my eyes looking behind me.

So my head almost touches down every time, And I'm not in my mind doing an abdominal curl, although there is a little bit of that. I'm really thinking about keeping my rib cage that I'm rotating to down. So continuing to do the movement, finding breath, Good. And hopefully as you do this, you begin to feel just a little bit of abdominal engagement, or maybe a lot, really thinking about the back ribs, sort of continuous movement, finding our way to something interesting. I hope. Remember to use your eyes to follow your hands. Last one each side.

Good. Now if you felt a little bit of work in your front neck, that's not bad. Actually, I'm hoping you felt a little bit of work in your front neck, but the amount of work that feels okay feels like a good idea. So we're gonna do a little bit of a, interesting movement here. So start with your legs together for me ground through your rib cage and let's, once again, take the arms overhead, okay, wherever they are.

They're not necessarily resting. They're reaching with the rib cage engaged. I like to touch my fingertips together like I'm holding a little ball. So here, imagine you're standing on the ground. You're gonna road I'm not rotate, but you're gonna side bend your arms and legs one way and look up.

So on the mat, you have to lift a little bit and then find that sticky slide. So now we're gonna go the other way. We're gonna side bend. I imagine you're standing, and then you're gonna look up. So arms and legs move simultaneously.

So option one can continue just like that. Yeah. Slide on your sticky mat and look up. And we'll do it one more time. Slide on your sticky mat and look up. Now if you're open to playing with me, you'll find a slippery surface, so you'll find a hardwood floor perhaps.

You'll lie on your back. You'll find that same shape for me, and we're gonna slip and slide and enjoy it. Low ribs are grounded, and you wanna feel yourself look. Look. Slide slide. So you're keeping your body.

You're keeping your head grounded. You're using your eyes to look up and to continuously move the body. I often call this slippery fish. One more time, we're gonna look one way, whichever way you're looking, you decide. I'm looking in the direction of the camera so that maybe I can see you and maybe you can see me. So I'm gonna unhook my hands so they're no longer touching. I'm gonna reach even more through the same arm that I'm stretching.

So it's my right side. My whole right side is stretching. I'm gonna squeeze my glutes, and I'm gonna roll myself over to my belly. Bloop. And then I'm gonna use my eyes, and I'm gonna roll myself back to my back. Yeah. And then we're gonna side bend the other way, and we're gonna push down through the feet, and we're gonna roll ourselves over using the eyes to our belly, and we're gonna roll ourselves over to our back.

Now Sometimes it feels a little bit tender on the hip bone. So if you need padding, use your mat. Otherwise, we try that a few times. So side bend, use your eyes roll over. Use your eyes roll back. Roll over. And roll back roll over and roll back.

Play with it, please. I like to do that for a good period of time every morning. I feel like it really holistically wakes up my abdominals. We're gonna add on on the mat or not on the mat. You choose. I like to be able to slide around a little bit. So we are going to just roll one more time to one side, whatever side that is for you, and stay on your belly.

And you're going to now put your hands down and put the pads of your toes down. Use your belly muscles, but use your back muscles to lift as high as you feel comfortable, and then use your arms to give you just a little more gaze forward. Let's do that two more times before we add on. We're gonna lift to back extension and then use your arms to bring you just a little bit up. So I'm purposefully only using my fingers because I don't wanna use my arms too much.

Lift and come forward. Okay. Now this is a lizard crawl, basically. Alright? So how about if you reach forward with your right arm and then pull it in? Reach forward with your left arm and pull it in. Let's just do that a few times. And then now legs, keep your arms where they are.

Bend one knee in. Slide it back. Try to keep your big toe grounded. So slide it in. And slide it back. So you're changing, right, changing legs, changing legs.

On the mat, it's just a little sticky, but you'll have to just lift the knee a little bit. Right? Let's just do that one more time on each side. Perfect. So now we're gonna do it together. So you're gonna reach with your right arm, bend your left knee. How does that feel?

Change. Left arm, right knee. Change. Now see if you can just change and change. Now I know that seems a little silly, but imagine a little lizard locking along. Try to use your body. Maybe even looking around a little bit. Looking.

Check out where it feels good to look. So we're cross about patterning here using body parts in different ways. Take a pause. If you felt cranky on one of your hips when you brought it out to the side, it's probably an indication that there's some dysfunction. So this is a really great way to unravel that.

I'm gonna move actually onto my mat now so we can do this next part on the mat without a problem. So you can bring your hands outside of your shoulders, okay, like you were, bend one knee and come forward. Big toes are touching. Feel that. Squeeze the glute of the straight leg.

Try to push the other leg into the table, not the table, but the floor, feel the intention there, change the arrangement. So one leg goes out to the side, squeeze the glute of the straight leg, push the knee into the floor, and feel something hopefully a little bit of a stretch. Good. So let's change the arrangement again. So I've got one knee out to the side, one leg is straight. I'm using my glute of my straight leg.

I'm also pushing the knee of my other leg into the floor. Now we're gonna do that little backbend lift again. Only lift as high as it feels good to you three times, please. Good. You don't even need to lift at all. And again, I'm tensing my fingers because I don't wanna use them a lot. Change sites.

So knees out to the side, squeeze the glute, push down through the knee, feel your legs, they're involved. And we lift just three times here. Your breath, your movement. And my dear friends, this is the last one. Good. Go ahead and tuck your toes under, push yourselves up to your hands and knees, bring yourself into a little child's pose and relax for a breath or two.

Hopefully, you feel from when maybe you can, just a little bit more space to breathe, a little bit more comfort in your deep rounding shape because we also worked some extension and some side bending. Beautiful. So let's move on. I'm gonna pivot around just for the camera angle. We're gonna start on a seat and roll back again, please.

This time, lift your legs to a tabletop position, single leg stretch. Yes. I told you there'd be some Pilates. Here we go. So single leg stretch. I'm breathing. I'm using my arms. I'm enjoying this flexion of the spine.

Are you ready? Are you sure? Here's the change. Everybody hold your left leg. Your right leg is straight. Good. The shape remains the same. The hands press together, not on the leg. Now, you're gonna use your eyes.

You're gonna look to your right. That's your straight leg side. And you're gonna use your eyes to roll yourself over onto your side. Hello. And then you're gonna roll yourself back. Change the arrangement.

Use your eyes. Roll yourself over. Come back into flexion. Change the arrangement. Roll over. Hello. That should feel kind of fun. What's interesting is the eyes can really help you.

I'm changing each time here. Whoa. Three dimensional abdominals here. Whoa. One more time each side, please. Breathing.

The eyes can really direct the movement. Come back through, hug the knees into your chest, put your head down. Alright. Now we do that with crisscross. So legs are up tabletop.

You may place your hands and put them behind your head. You may lift your head and just nice and high, and we'll take a crisscross, twisting toward the bent knee, twisting and lifting, twisting and lifting. Bam. Beautiful. Let's just do one more, and then we're gonna change here. So I am twisting toward my right leg. Yeah.

So my right leg is the one that's in. That's the way we're gonna go. So keep looking to the right and take your body with your eyes. This one's so much harder for me over to the side. So you've rested your head in your arm. Your leg is is down. The the bent knee is down. Now we're gonna do some leg work here.

Use your glute as you swing forward and you swing back. So I kick forward flex point foot back. So I'm keeping my shoulder engaged. My whole side body is working because it is not resting on the mat. Breathe and move. Good.

And one more time, take the leg back and stay. I'm reaching through the leg. I'm gonna kick the knee bent, meaning I'm trying to kick my booty with my heel hamstring and glute there. Beautiful. Let's do a few more. And one more time, Good. Extend the leg back to straight.

Send the leg down in alignment with your body. Send the other leg to join. Return to flexion. Look at your legs. Are you ready? We're gonna roll to hundreds.

So You roll back to your back body, you reach your arms toward your feet and you breathe with a hint of a smile across your cheeks, please. Leggs are straight. Low back is grounded. And take a couple breaths as you pump your arms. Beautiful, inhaling.

And exhaling, draw your knees in, put your head down. Yes. We'll do the other side. Lakes at tabletop, lift your head and chest, twist to the left, and change, and change. Stay lifted. Change. Change.

One more time. We're gonna stay to the left. Look, use your eyes to rotate around, straighten out your body, and be here for a moment. The the bottom knee is bent at ninety ninety. So hip at the hip and knee at 90. The top leg is straight. Your arms are active.

Your bottom rib is lifted. Hold it. Now, swing the leg forward, flexed foot, swing the leg back. Swing the leg forward, swing the leg back. So I like to flex forward and point back. It doesn't really matter.

It's just pretty. It's nice. Good this time. Hold the leg back. Reach, reach, reach, reach. Squeeze that glute, kick, and straighten. So I'm bending the knee, trying to access the hamstring in the glute, and reaching a little more.

A few more like that, and straighten, and kick and straighten. Okay. Now you're gonna slide your bottom leg down with your other leg. You're gonna look toward your feet, flex your spine, reach your hands into your hundred shape, and we breathe. So just a few breaths here in the hundred shape, breathing in, and breathing out. Draw your legs inward, hold the backs of your legs, lift your chest, lift your pelvis, and let's rock, and let's roll.

On our spines until we find ourselves sitting. Send your feet to the front corners of your mat, straighten your legs, scoop any flesh out that needs scooping and stretch your arms forward. We're doing spine stretch. So ankles are flexed, knees are facing up. Inhale, roll forward bending through the spine. Good. Now inhale, extend through the spine as far as you can go, lift your arms up in alignment with your body.

Round yourself down and all the way back up to sitting. Again, exhale to curl forward, perhaps. Take a nice stretch through the body, feel the upper back, explore, round forward. And back up. And again.

And reach and down. And then one more spine stretch, please. Then we'll actually hold a little bit of a twisting stretch. So why don't we hold the right arm up, reach the left arm and hold the right foot, rotate yourself around. Enjoy that beautiful stretch.

Also continue reaching through the arm. If the reach of the arm doesn't serve you, put it down, doesn't matter. If it serves you, keep it up. Breathe in. And breathe out.

Come back through to your flat back. Let's go to the other side, so you're going to hold Other foot, other hand, reach up and stretch. I always love looking this way. Although I don't get to look you in the eyes through the camera, I do get to look at the beautiful sky. And the beautiful beach.

Good. Remember if it doesn't serve you, put the arm down, breathing in, and breathing out. Come around, round yourself forward, relax yourself back up to sitting. Let's do some more rolling. So scoot forward on your mat. You're gonna tip back until you find your ball shape digging deep into the abdominals, hug those legs in, tighten up the ball, get a hold. Here we go.

Draw those abdominals nice and active as you roll. Breathing and rolling. So I have found in my practice that a lot of people get so caught up in rolling perfectly that we don't get as much of the joy of rolling through the thoracic spine as we might need. So come to a pause with your legs at a diamond shape, make your hands into kind of a diamond shape as well. Round back, let the legs hover, roll back, and back up forward.

So playful rolling here. Play full diamond rolling. What I like to do is use my arms overhead to help stop so that I'm not stopping myself only with my head. Whoo. Little hard to speak and do this one. But here we go.

We're rolling. I don't wanna feel like I'm using my head to stop. I'm using my arms and my shoulders. So I'm overhead now. I'm in like a rollover type shape, but my knees are in a diamond shape right now. Let's change that. Pushing down through the shoulders.

Really feel that. My head is free. I'm gonna bend, straighten my legs separate them. And I'm gonna try to bring my feet to my hands that are overhead. And if you can do that, wonderful, if you can't do something that feels good or stop. So I've got my shoulders away from my ears, is what I'm thinking about. So my neck is long.

I'm holding my toes, trying to straighten my legs, and try to breathe back into your lungs on the back of your chest, stretching the upper back supporting with the abdominals. Hard to talk here. Bend two knees. See if you can bring your knees to touch your forehead and breathe. Gently release the shape.

You may take your hands to the backs of your legs, support with your abdominals. And then as you bend your knees toward your bottom, you might roll up to a seat. That felt wonderful for me. I hope it felt good to you as well. So let's scooch back on the mat, cross the legs in front of you, play with this cross legged position.

Change. So I rock back onto my bottom and I change. Rock back onto my bottom and I change. So that's an option one practicing just the difference between the two cross legged positions. If you're up for the challenge, you're gonna cross your legs. And then you're gonna come up to your knees. If your knees don't do that, don't do it. So I've crossed my legs.

I come up to my knees, and I'm practicing the transition to quadruped here. This is also practicing a skill needed for some advanced mat work. So that's what we're doing. Just changing and changing. So come around on to your hands and knees.

You're now in quadruped. However you needed to get there is just fine with me. You listen to your body, please. With your hands underneath your shoulders, your knees underneath your hips. Open your heart, feel yourself levitating up the entire time, abdominals are engaged, but you're also, like, lifting out of your hands and out of your legs here.

That's what I'd like you to think about. So let's work just a little bit of shoulder rotation here. So we're gonna lift the right hand, lift the left leg. Yeah? Lift then put it down, lift the other hand, lift the other leg. Right? So that would be like what we would do if we were gonna be crawling. So let's now tuck the toes under so you have activity in the feet, hover the knees. K? We're gonna do that again. We're gonna lift the right hand, left leg, and you're gonna rotate around and find a seat opening the chest here.

So we're using the back body through the arm right now. As you rotate back through, you transfer to the front body. Yeah. So two hands, two feet are down, knees are lifted. Rotate around, open your chest, have a seat. Beautiful. So you wanna feel the transfer.

This is really wonderful upper arm work, a wonderful arm work, I would say. Rotator cuff work actively. Come back around, to your quadrupeds hovering. Let's change a little bit more energetically change. Now open your chest. Try to feel your upper back, the transfer of the work to the upper back. As you open around, maybe you can look all the way up to the ceiling, and maybe you don't put your foot down or your knee down or your hip down.

Maybe you stay on one hand and one foot. You choose. It should feel good. One more time, back through to center. Find a rest pose, a child's pose.

Take a breath. Two, three, or four. Breathing in and breathing out. Please remember when I don't queue you to breathe to make sure and focus on breath today. Come forward into a quadruped position.

Hans are underneath your, shoulders, knees are underneath your hips, feel the power of your body and your breath. Slide one leg back. And the other, you're in plank now. Okay? Holding this powerful plank. Beautiful. Let's all just take one foot and step forward and then back. You're gonna step forward outside of your hand and back. Changing forward and back, and forward, and back hold. Put your knees down.

Sit back on your toes and give your toes a little stretch. So we're gonna get a little bit more juicy with that exercise. So I'll cue you right and left so we're all doing it together. Here we go. Nice little toe stretch just to give you a moment of rest in your hands, shake them out. Come back to your hands and your knees, please.

Go ahead. Find your plank slide. One leg, slide the other leg. You're there. Everybody find your right leg. Step forward next to your right hand.

Change left leg. Bam. Let's keep going with that right and left. Good. Right. And left, hold right leg down. With the right foot down, you're gonna lift the right hand up. Yeah. You could do that easily, hopefully.

Press forward through your pelvis, look up. So I've got three limbs grounded right now. And then I'm gonna put two hands down, foot back, other side, left leg forward. Left hand can lift up. Go wherever you want it to be. I like to take it to my back body to my pelvis.

Press your pelvis forward. And look up or forward. And then look down two hands, two feet, hips high, walk your feet in a little bit and enjoy a little bit of a down dog or an up stretch depending on how you view this exercise. Breathing in, and breathing out. Let's walk the feet in the direction of the hands until you feel that you can hang in a forward fold.

I like to have my feet a little bit separated. Let my head relax. Perhaps you'll hold your elbows with your hands, sway side to side. Now think of engaging your abdominals quite a lot, straighten your legs or bend your knees, your choice, roll yourself up. To a standing position. Good. We're gonna do some lunging here.

So let's all stand on our left foot, feel the power from your left foot, find your balance. I don't care what the hands do. I just want you to be here. Yeah? Find your balance so your other foot is just lifted, kinda dancing around. One of the things I've been working on is really feeling the power from my standing leg and letting things get a little bit squirrely so that I feel that my balance is a little bit more organic. Hold still, perhaps, and send your right leg back into a lunge, beautiful step forward again, lift, heel, or lift leg.

Reach back to a lunge and lift. Good side. Just have my arms outstretched. And I'm letting them organically do what they feel like doing rather than it needing to be perfect. One more time, we take ourselves into that lunge, and we're gonna stay here. Beautiful. So I've, my my right foot is back.

We're gonna bend both knees until you can tap the knee down. Straighten both legs, reach arms up. Press hands down as you tap the knee and lift up. Press hands down as you tap and we lift up. So I'm now straightening my arms and just using my arms in this move because it feels nice. And one more time. Good.

Take your knee off the floor, stretch your back leg to straight. Right leg is back. So right arm goes up. So reach up, look up. Take your other hand wherever you feel like.

I like reaching around toward my leg. And really just feeling that openness through my chest as I breathe. And breathe. And breathe. Look forward. Step to your front leg.

Always harder to balance after you've been on it for a little while. Change legs. So shake it out a little. Well, shake rattling and rolling is good for us. So standing now on the right leg, find your balance. So again, Don't hold the balance perfectly.

Shake things around a little bit, move them around. I like to really work on these days, just feeling that I have more agility in all of the wiggle room on my standing leg or my balances. So playing around a little is what we're doing here. So after you've wiggled enough, hold it still if you can. Hard to do after you've been wiggling, and then step back into your lunge, let your arms do what they need to do. Step forward. Hold.

Again, step back. I could do this the rest of the day. Looking at the waves, enjoying some nice movement with all of you. Beautiful. We'll do just one more. Hold here. Okay? So two legs are gonna bend simultaneously. Arms go up.

Tap the knee if you can. And arms go down, both legs straightened. Arms go up and down. So you do you with the arms. It's nice to do something together, but it's not absolutely necessary.

And we'll do one more here. Up and down, bend into a stretch that suits you, really push that back leg to straight, feel the stretch through the front of the hip, reach up, same arm as legs. So my left arm is up. My left leg is stretching. My other arm can kinda reach around.

And just enjoy that chest opener. Go with the pleasure principle here, figure out what you need to feel, stretch things, enjoy it, breathing in, and breathing out. Gently rest that. Step onto that front leg. One last time, we roll ourselves down. Well, I guess we only did one roll up.

So one last time is maybe not the right cue, but let's roll down. Put your hands on the mat, walk your feet back. We'll sit in a child not a child's post, but a downward dog stretch for a little bit. So shoulders away from ears, pressing through the hands. Bend one knee stretch that calf a little bit and change.

And change. So I'm doing a little prancing with my feet, a little stretching through my feet and my legs, two feet endeavor to be down. Shift forward to your plank. Hold there for a moment. Lower your knees down. Okay.

So we are all warmed up for some juicy side body work, my friends. Let's do it. Yeah. Begin in quadruped position first. Okay. Take your right hand and put the right hand on your chest. Okay? And then rotate your body as much as you can looking up. Okay? So feel that it's not about rotating your body as much as it is about using your shoulder differently.

So think about squeezing your shoulders a little bit together. And then lifting up or accessing the muscles between your shoulders. Think about that. Rest that, please. Other side. Okay? So now you're standing on the right arm. You're gonna put your hand on your chest somewhere. And the reason I say hand on the chest is because I want you to think about opening your heart as you use the muscles of your back body to do this, come back to center.

So I'm rotating. I'm looking. I'm thinking about what's happening on my back body. Back to center. And one more time, two more times actually will make us even, please. Good.

Take a pause on your hands. You can stretch your toes for a moment. We are going into a full side plank here. By way of the what we just practiced, but please make sure you listen to your body and modify as needed. Here we go. Back to our hands and knees.

First, you will, please, stand on your left hand. Slide your left leg to straight, really flex the foot back. So you've got all of your toes are down. Yes. You're gonna take your other hand to your heart. You're gonna open as much as you can.

Look at me. Do that again. You're gonna open as much as you can. Use the muscles behind your shoulders. And then one more time. Open. We transfer to our side plank, keep the foot down, or bring the foot up your choice.

Take that same hand down and through. Look at your thumb. Try to touch your thumb with your pointer finger right back up. Staying lifted with your hips. Look at your thumb.

Try to touch your thumb with your pointer finger. Or your middle finger. I don't care which one, whatever finger is the longest, I guess. We'll do two more here. Speaking and doing. And one more time.

Nice rotation while stabilizing. Yes. We come back around, two knees down, two toes tucked. Other side. Slide right leg straight. Really make sure the foot is grounded. Other toes are grounded too.

Rotate your body open. Feel that. Flip yourself around to your side. So ankle flexed, standing foot. Keep it down the other one or stack at your choice. Good student's choice here.

So feel your abs. Let your hand reach down. And try to touch your thumb with your hand and lift back up. Use your eyes. And again, reach down.

Touch your thumb. Keep your hips lifted. And back up. And touch. Okay.

One more time, please. That woo was me falling a little bit. Good. You can come foot down, knee down, back to where we began. Sit in child's pose for just a short lived moment. And then in whatever fashion you'd like, you can crawl yourself out to your belly.

So however you'd like to get on your belly, make that happen, let's bend one knee and stretch How about we all bend the right leg and hold the right foot with your right hand? You can rest your forehead down on your wrist or hand. Okay? So if you're holding on to your right foot, I'd like you to really think about pressing your pelvis into the mat, lifting the thigh up, kicking the foot into your hand, opening your chest. So option one, you could stay here. Hang out. Option two, you put your hand down outside of you. One that was underneath your forehead. You keep the integrity of this right arc you have here, and you roll yourself to the side. And you roll back.

Now you don't actually need your hand or your foot. But for practice, you might use your toe when we're doing just a single leg, single arm like this. K? Let's do the other side. K? So start with your forehead resting on your hand, then the other leg. Hold on. So we're on left side. K? Just stretch for a little bit if you want.

Hang out here and call this the end if you need. Otherwise, follow along. We open the heart. We press the pelvis down. We kick the foot into the arm, getting a big stretch.

Lots of tensegrity there. Take the hand, the other hand out to the side, use the fingertips or don't, press into that hand with the foot. Use your eyes and roll yourself over and roll yourself back. And try that just a couple more times. Yes. You guessed it.

We're doing this with two arms and two legs in a moment. Yeah. It's all about the eyes and the head. Here we go. You do you, feel free to go back to single leg stretches. Otherwise, we are in a rocking prep. Like to do this with flex feet. Lift up nice and high, find the shape.

Feel your chest open. Feel some agility here. Wiggle around. Let there be some movement. Now use your eyes. Look and roll onto one side, look the other way, and roll to center.

Look and roll onto one side, and then look back to where you came from. And I feel like rolling back is always a little harder on one side. Try again. Rock and roll. Getting a little momentum helps. Beautiful. Let's go ahead and rest.

And we'll finish this class just like we began. So if you find your way into a modified child's pose or a full child's pose or a rest pose or a prompt pose, you do you. Relax forward. I'm gonna send my arms behind me in what in yoga they would call an embryo pose, because that feels nice to me. Return to breath, please, breathing in.

And breathing out. I think I mentioned in the beginning of this class that this is one of those routines that I like to do in the morning before my day, parts of it, all of it, sometimes more, sometimes less. So it always begins with breath work, and I usually always finish with breath work, making sure that I'm ready for my day, breathing in, and breathing out. Feel free to stay there and breathe and relax a little longer. But I'd like to thank you for each and every one of you for joining me today.

Have fun.